When District Policy Might Violate State Law

What's a teacher to do?

Teachers working in California school districts with conservative school boards are increasingly finding themselves with a difficult decision: violate district policy and risk losing their job, or potentially disobey federal and state laws and policies and take a chance on ending up in court.

Last Monday was the first day of school at Chino Valley Unified campuses since the passage of a controversial board policy that would require teachers, counselors and administrators to notify parents if a child asks to be identified by a different gender or name, or to access a bathroom or take part in a program not aligned with the gender on their official records. 

After the Chino Valley Unified decision, California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned the school district that the parental notification policy could violate the state’s anti-discrimination laws and students’ rights to privacy guaranteed under the U.S. and California constitutions, as well as federal Title IX protections and the state education code. Bonta launched a civil rights investigation into the school district last week...

(Local teachers union president) Walker sent a memo to teachers last week advising them to follow the district’s new policy but to object to it if they think the policy is improper or unlawful. If a teacher feels uncomfortable talking to a parent about a child’s gender identification, they should ask one of their administrators to take on that task, the memo directed.

“Members are expected to comply with directives given by their administrators, and if a member or the association find that there has been a violation of the collective bargaining agreement, then a grievance can be filed,”  Walker said...

Guidance from the California Department of Education recommends that schools ask transgender students who, if anyone, they would like to be informed of their transgender status. The department says that rule should only be broken in rare circumstances when district officials feel there is a compelling need for parents to know the information and the student is given advance notice before parents are informed.

If you're keeping information from all parents because you think some might act in a way that you wouldn't agree with, well... 

It shouldn't be a teacher's place to keep information from parents.  What a horrible position to put teachers in.

Happy Mark Janus Day! An Annual Post.

In February 2018, I altered my flight plans home from Iceland to detour to Washington, DC.  Among so many other exciting activities, I gave a speech on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court and stood behind Mark Janus as he talked to the press after the Court heard his case.

Four months later, as I walked among the Mayan ruins at Tulum, I got the word so many of us had hoped for.  It was five years ago today.

Is This What A Library Should Look Like?

For some completely unexplained reason, our district has given one woman (the "furniture nazi") complete power to dictate what furniture we need and will have in every room of our school.  We teachers have had over a month to adjust to what we were given, and now our office staffs and others have gotten their furniture.

We came back from Spring Break yesterday and I headed to our staff lounge, I wanted to see what stupidity had overtaken the place--and it had taken over the place.  We now have a couple bar-height tables with 10 bar-height stools, as well as a couple "normal" tables and chairs.  No one likes climbing up the stools to the tall tables; one lady said she couldn't sit there with a skirt on!  I surveyed everyone who haunts that particular lounge (our ranch-style campus has 3 lounges) and while one person was ambivalent, no one else liked the too-tall tables.

I knew the front office and counseling office would be disaster areas, and they even exceeded my expectations.  Then there was the library:

Does that look like a high school library to you?  This is less than half of the original seating in the library, and less than half of the shelving space.  What you see is what you get, that's our library.  How is that a library for a school with almost 2000 students?  Why did some furniture purchaser get to decide that this is what a library should look like, and why did the district suits allow it?

Hey, "anonymous" commenter from my last post:  librarians are in the teachers union.  That union didn't do squat about this.  They didn't do squat about our being compelled to accept the furniture that the furniture nazi ordered, all they did was negotiate with the district to pay us a couple hundred dollars each to pack up and unpack our classrooms for the furniture swap.  How many dollars per hour do you think that came out to for our librarian, who had to box up every single book in our library?  Where was your vaunted union here?  The union for all the secretaries--office, attendance, counseling, finance, etc--didn't even negotiate extra pay for them.  Wave your union banner high, though, "anonymous", unions are covering themselves with glory just about as much as the furniture nazi is.

Payroll Deduction for Union Dues

The issue is payroll deduction for union dues.

I can actually see both sides of this issue--well, at least part of each side.

Argument in favor of ending payroll deduction for union dues:  why should a government agency (schools) serve as a conduit for funding an outside organization (union)?  Let them get their money from their members.

The legislators say that it’s not necessary for public school districts to be involved in financial transactions on behalf of unions.

Argument against the above argument:

Union officials had to get all their members to sign up for a new form of dues payments, and then manage the administrative burden that came with those payments. For example, if an educator’s credit card expired, the union would then have to make sure that the educator added a new form of payment...

“Many of our classified employees do not have credit cards or bank accounts,” she said.

Point of order!  I call B.S. on that last statement. I'll bet every one of those people is paid via direct deposit.

Argument against the argument against:

Proponents of the bills disagree. Finding another method to collect dues “is a very minor inconvenience,” said Rusty Brown, the Southern director for Freedom Foundation, a conservative, free-market think tank. “To say that’s shifting rights away—that’s, at best, a stretch.”

He argued that it’s no longer necessary for public school districts to serve as a financial intermediator between teachers and their unions, since automatic bill payments are increasingly common and easy to set up.

If you can do it for the electric company, you can do it for your union. 

Argument against ending payroll deduction for union dues:

But teachers’ unions say that adapting to these measures will require a lot of time and money and could hurt their membership numbers. They also point out that many of these bills exclude conservative-leaning unions, like those for police, and target teachers’ unions, which typically support Democratic politicians.

Argument against the above argument: If they provide a decent service, people will pay for it; it's not the school district's responsibility to keep a union's membership numbers up.  That's a silly, whiny argument.  The next point, though, is valid--why are they singling out the teachers unions?  If you're going to get rid of payroll deduction for unions, then all public service unions should be treated this way.  It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a penalty for being a union that supports Democrats, and that's not how a legislature should make decisions.  

My conclusion:  it's very little effort for a school district to set up payroll deduction.  You can have money deducted for an IRA/403b or for health insurance contributions, why not for a union?  No, it's not the district's responsibility to support the union, but if they're going to set up payroll deduction, I don't see why union dues cannot also be withheld--especially since government employees are no longer required to be a member of, or pay money to, a union since the 2018 Janus case (about which I've written many times) and thus all union dues are voluntary.

I did find this concern interesting, however:

Legislators in support of the bills have also said that having to let school district officials know whether you’re a union member could lead to harassment or discrimination.

“This bill is about removing any potential fear or intimidation in the workplace,” said Arkansas state Sen. Joshua Bryant, a Republican and the author of a related bill, during a floor debate, according to the Freedom Foundation. “The technology is there to be able to pay our dues direct. Why do we have to go through and fill out a form, check a box, and annually let people know what we’re doing? Why can’t we just take this like we do everything else and take it to our home?”

Yes, it could happen, but absent any evidence that it does happen or has happened, I'm tentatively willing to call this one a red herring.  Still, the old warning holds true:  eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.  You've got to watch labor unions like a hawk.

Strange Bedfellows Have Made My Feet Cold

Did that title get your attention?  😆

I'm filling out my mail-in ballot--sadly I only get one, unlike others in California, and since I'm a Republican none of my votes will count anyway.  Anyway, I'm reading up on the ballot measures.

California's voter information guides include information about each ballot measure, and then have a feature I really like--four submitted attempts to sway your vote:  Argument in favor of Proposition #whatever, Rebuttal to argument in favor of Proposition #whatever, Argument against Proposition #whatever, and Rebuttal to argument against Proposition #whatever.  It's a pretty good bet that I can tell which way to vote just by looking at which individuals and organizations have signed on to each of those four arguments.

But not this time, not for Proposition 30.

Here's how the Attorney General's office summarizes Proposition 30:

Increases tax on personal income over $2 million by 1.75% for individuals and married couples and allocates new tax revenues as follows: (1) 45% for rebates and other incentives for zero-emission vehicle purchases and 35% for charging stations for zero-emission vehicles, with at least half of this funding directed to low-income households and communities; and (2) 20% for wildfire prevention and suppression programs, with priority given to hiring and training firefighters.

Isn't that quite the mix of goals!  And we're only going to tax "the rich"!

I've seen one commercial dozens of times for this proposition, and we're told none of that.  All we're told is that California has the worst air quality in the state, and that our bad air quality is caused by car exhaust and fires caused by global warming.  Voting for Prop 30 will change this.  

Yeah, right.  I already leaned against Prop 30 before opening the voter information guide.

The Argument In Favor of Prop 30 was signed by the president of the CalFire State Firefighters (shocking, I know), a doctor in the American Lung Association, and the vice chair of the Coalition for Clean Air.  The Rebuttal to the Argument Against Prop 30 was signed by the CEO of California Environmental Voters, a Senior Attorney on Climate and Clean Energy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a/the senior climate scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Yes, I leaned harder against this proposition.

Then I looked at the Rebuttal To Argument In Favor, and it was signed by the president of the California Teachers Association and the former State Superintendent of Public Instruction.  The Argument Against Proposition 30 was signed by the president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the president of the California Small Business Association, and the President of United Latinos Action.

Those are some strange bedfellows, so strange that Hell itself must have frozen over.  In between their shivers and chattering teeth, they remind us that California has a huge budget surplus and thus we already have plenty of money to hire more firefighters.  They also remind us that our electrical grid is already so delicate that the state suffers blackouts every summer, and more electric cars isn't going to help that situation.

Despite the fear of frostbite on my feet, I'm voting NO on Proposition 30.

Tentative Agreement Vote Update

I'm not allowed to vote on our contract because I'm not a union member, but I was included in an email announcing the results of said contract vote:

Hey Folks,

Some communication from the union-

Colleagues, 

The Tentative Agreement Ratification voting results are as follows:

Ballots Submitted:  868 

Yes, I accept the Tentative Agreement:                 851     (98.0%)

No, I do not accept the Tentative Agreement:       17   (1.9%)  

The membership has ratified the Agreement.

Thank you to the Bargaining Team for their outstanding work in negotiating this historic deal. 

In unity...

There are over 2000 members in our bargaining unit, fewer than half of them voted.  And less than 2% of them voted against it?  Hmmmm.  I'd bet we could get over 10% to vote against a statement that the sky is blue.

Less than 2%.  I'm friends with our school's union rep and knew he'd get my joke, so I replied with the following:

A percentage very much like the Russian annexation votes in occupied Ukraine.

They Were Wrong But They Won--So They Don't Care

Children are such convenient victims for lefties, since children can't fight back:

Critics of the pandemic school closures have been vindicated.

They warned the closures would cause serious, possibly irreversible, developmental retardation. They warned of severe learning loss.

Alas.

The critics were not just ignored, they were also maligned by a vicious cabal of politicians, news media personalities, and education professionals, most notably American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. The critics were called monsters and "grandma killers." They were accused of not "trusting" the science.

"Children are resilient," the pro-closure camp smugly asserted. (No, it’s not that children are resilient. It’s that they don’t yet have the words to describe the ways in which you are harming them.)

Now, a little more than two years after the pandemic first came to America, new data confirm the mass school closures, which, by the way, Democratic politicians and teachers' unions enforced with a religious fever even long after the restrictions were shown to be little more than superstitious hocus-pokery, caused serious harm to young students. 

They won't apologize and won't admit they were wrong, because they won so much (e.g., the presidency) in the process.  No, this will go in their toolbags for the next crisis, which won't be allowed to go to waste.

Doubling Down

Knowing without a doubt that this is absolutely illegal, why would they do it?  The answer is obvious--to demonstrate their progressive bona fides:

Ahead of the new school year, Minneapolis Public Schools has defended its agreement reached with the teacher's union this spring to prioritize retaining educators of underrepresented backgrounds when determining layoffs.

Effective in the spring of 2023, the contract provision states that teachers who are members of "populations underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district" may be exempt from district-wide layoffs outside of seniority order, deviating from the traditional "last-in, first-out" system.

The stipulation is a part of a recent collective bargaining agreement between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and MPS, which concluded a weekslong teachers' strike in March.

"To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district," a spokesperson for Minneapolis Public Schools said in a statement to ABC News Wednesday.

Making these types of hiring/firing decisions based on race is illegal in this country.  How much taxpayer money will be wasted on the inevitable lawsuit?

Union Won't Back A Teacher Challenging Leftie Indoctrination

If you think unions protect your interests, think again:

A Connecticut gym teacher says his school threatened to fire him after he criticized its mandatory diversity training on "exploring privilege." But when he filed a grievance against the school, the local teachers' union dismissed the complaint without explanation.

John Grande filed the grievance against Hartford Public Schools for what he called targeted discipline—including threats of termination and further "Sensitivity Awareness" training—but the American Federation of Teachers Local 1018, which has jurisdiction over this arbitration process for teachers, rejected his plea, his attorney told the Washington Free Beacon. Grande, who has been a gym teacher for 30 years, said the union retaliated against him for refusing to join the labor group...

"Officials are refusing to represent him simply because he isn't a member," Nathan McGrath, president of the Fairness Center, told the Free Beacon. "John is just asking the union to do its job so he can continue doing his."

It's the unions who asked government to designate unions the sole representative of employees, members or not.   Now, when asked to live up to what they always asked for and got, they renege.

Then there's this:

"The Hartford School System, aided and abetted by the teachers' union, has failed our kids," Ricci told the Free Beacon. "Instead of focusing on their dismal test scores or bridging the achievement gap, they are focusing on ‘privilege,' which is nothing more than a distraction for their failed education policies."

When they can't deliver good education, they'll deliver "woke" education.

Keeping Secrets

In general, if you're telling kids to keep things from their parents, you might be the bad guy:

The American Federation of Teachers promoted the use of a pronoun card which included a question of whether the student wanted their parents to know about their pronouns, Fox News Digital has learned. 

The AFT's "Share My Lesson" website promoted using the cards in an "all" grade levels section, such as middle school. "Something as simple as a Student Introduction Card could make a student feel seen and affirmed," the lesson, by the AFT's Vision and Mission of the Identity Affirming Classroom Team, said.

The "Introduction Card" asked whether the student wanted their pronouns used when calling the student's parents. 

"Can I call you this name outside of class?" the card said. "May I use these pronouns when calling home?"

Making Race The Focus of All Education

My key point is that we are at an inflection point. “Critical Race Theory” is now a toxic term and the racialization of education has lost the public opinion battle overall. But the infrastructure that racialized and increasingly sexualized education remains — the school board members, the big money leftist donors and foundations, the teachers unions, the consultants, the book companies, the education bureaucracy, and other institutional support. We are at an inflection point where we need to shift to dismantling the woke educational infrastructure, because if it is permitted to remain, when the publicity fades these grifters will come roaring back.

Control of the state government in more than half the states is one of the few institutions where non-liberals still have power. Almost every other institution has been captured. So the states, including state legislatures, are uniquely positioned as both a last line of defense and a platform to recapture what has been lost and bring it back at least to the center.

Read the whole thing.

A Bleak Assessment

You can shoot the messenger all you want, but when you're done with that, the points made still need to be addressed:

A new Gallup Poll shows that only 28% of Americans hold a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our public school system, and given the state of that system, one can only assume those people work for teachers’ unions.

This is the second lowest percentage since Gallup first started tracking the issue in the 1970s, and it isn’t hard to understand why. The failings of our government school system were put on full display during COVID as schools shut down and the classroom moved to Zoom. 

Parents were, often for the first time, presented with the materials their kids were actually being taught and many realized just how much time their kid wasted on a day-to-day basis.

Couple that with the egregious actions of the teachers’ unions—unions that leech off the taxpayers’ dime like a fat tick—who worked to unnecessarily keep schools shut down or enforced ridiculous COVID protocols despite parents’ wishes. They basically held the education system hostage for two years and left us with the bill—which was bound to anger anyone paying even passing attention to the situation.

And this is just the backlash against the policies found in public schools over the past two years, it doesn’t even touch on the abysmal testing results and outcomes for those who go through government schools.

If you want to know what was being taught in my classes, you can view my instructional videos on my YouTube page. 

Just a few days ago I received an email from a lady who used to be a rookie teacher at my school, now she oversees math and science teaching in our district.  She congratulated me on teaching what will be our first dual-enrollment (with the local community college) statistics class in our district, and of course offered what assistance she could.  She also said she'd like to come visit that class some time, if that would be OK.  Administrators and other teachers are always welcome in my class, and no, they don't need to make an appointment with me!  It's my class but it's their school, and we share the students, and I expect them to know what's going on in classes around school!  Anyway, I told this new "suit" that she could come by at any time.  I have nothing to hide from my bosses.

Happy Mark Janus Day!

In February 2018, I altered my flight plans home from Iceland to detour to Washington, DC.  Among so many other exciting activities, I gave a speech on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court and stood behind Mark Janus as he talked to the press after the Court heard his case.

Four months later, as I walked among the Mayan ruins at Tulum, I got the word so many of us had hoped for.  It was four years ago today.

Strike

The teachers in a nearby school district are on strike.

A teacher in that district with the same education and years of service that I have makes 2.1% more money than I do, works 2 fewer days a year, and has already been offered a raise higher my district’s teachers union will settle for after negotiations (if the last 10+ years are any indication). I say this not to denigrate the Sac City teachers—I honestly don’t know which side in their dispute is asking too much—but to show why I don’t think so highly of the union in my own district. That’s partly why I’m not a member.

Update, 4/4/22:  Sac City teachers went back to work today after agreeing to the following with their district:

The tentative agreement with the teachers union includes ongoing 4% salary increases starting with the current school year; 3% one-time stipends for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years; one-time payments of $1,250 in the current school year; 25% rate increases for substitutes who filled in for absent teachers this year; and 14 more sick days for subs who test positive for or have symptoms of COVID-19. 

The deal also addresses teacher health benefits, which have been a point of contention for years between the district and union. 

“The district will continue to provide 100% paid health coverage through Kaiser and a mutually agreed upon alternative plan or plans. The current alternative plan is HealthNet,” the district said. 

The teachers union will also “withdraw a grievance and all of its pending unfair practice charges filed with the Public Employment Relations Board.”

My local union would settle for a 1% one-time bonus, and a majority of the teachers (if you trust the union's vote-counting) would approve it.

Our Good Friends at the NEA

It's been a long time since I've written about the predominant teachers union, and all of a sudden two stories pop up!

I've believed for a long time that if you scratch a leftie, a totalitarian bleeds--and totalitarians love nothing more than killing people, because getting rid of people who don't think like they do is how totalitarians stay in power.  So it is with NEA u-bots:

A member of the board of directors of the National Education Association (NEA) posted a message to Facebook that denounced unvaccinated individuals who claim religious exemptions and asserted they deserved to die, according to the Libs of Tik Tok social media account, which shared a screenshot of the post on Tuesday. 

Mollie Paige Mumau, a Pennsylvania teacher and member of the board of directors of the NEA, appears to identify herself as an “educator, wife, union advocate, semi-pro wine drinker, LGBTQ ally, and ‘Team Pfizer.’”

You can see the screenshot at the link. 

Next, the NEA is going to bring Texas to its knees by moving (canceling?) its annual convention Nuremberg Rally:

Thousands of delegates to the National Education Association Representative Assembly will not be meeting in Dallas in July as scheduled, and the reason has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The union took the unprecedented step of canceling its Texas plans due to its displeasure with a series of bills that came out of a special session of the state legislature having to do with voting, abortion and critical race theory, internal NEA sources say. Several state affiliates had threatened not to send their delegates to the convention if it were held in Texas...

Considering the estimated 6,000 delegates involved and hotel rooms needed, it will be difficult to find another venue on such short notice. One source reports that NEA is looking at Chicago and Orlando as possible destinations. If an alternative cannot be found, the 2022 assembly will be held online...

A complicating factor is whether NEA is willing to continue down this boycott path. Will it schedule future meetings only in blue states? That could get tricky and expensive.

Gotta love all that tolerance.

Wait By The River Long Enough, And Eventually The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By

In other words, many times we don't have to go after our enemies; give them time and opportunity and they'll do at least as much damage to themselves as we would do.  That thought came to me as I read this piece from Larry Sand* about the Los Angeles teachers union president's recent comments:

In a stunningly revealing exposé in Los Angeles Magazine, United Teachers of Los Angeles president Cecily Myart-Cruz told the world what many of us already knew – that her primary concern is advancing her Marxist political agenda rather than educating children. The in-depth piece has received much media ink, notably her comment about pandemic-related learning loss. When asked about how her union’s insistence on keeping L.A.’s schools locked down for over a year may have impacted the city’s k-12 students, Myart-Cruz responded, “There is no such thing as learning loss. Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.” She went on to say that “learning loss” is a “fake crisis marketed by shadowy purveyors of clinical and classroom assessments.”

Her jaw-dropping words are at odds with those who have researched the subject, however. For example, McKinsey & Company reported in July that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, “leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the (2020-2021) school year.” The researchers also noted that school shutdowns “widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest.” They add that Blacks were especially hard hit, and that high schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school. They also report that “the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.”

Even the not-exactly-right-wing Los Angeles Times editorial page trashed Myart-Cruz, stating in no uncertain terms, “Learning loss is real. Stop pretending otherwise.”

What could I tell you about this person that would be worse than her own words?

*Full disclosure:  Larry Sand and I serve on the board of directors of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, or CTEN.

The Impact of the Janus Ruling On the NEA's Income

Some thought unions would come to an end after the Janus ruling.  Some thought it would invigorate the union movement out of fear.  Neither came true:

When it came to money, at least, all that sound and fury signified nothing.

The combined annual incomes of the National Education Association and its state affiliates as of Aug. 31, 2019, was $1,663,883,934. That was an increase of $45,727 from the previous year, or 0.003 percent.

That’s not to say there was no effect whatsoever. Thirty-one state affiliates lost members that year, and 24 saw a reduction in revenues. But there is no consistent correlation between membership levels or revenues and states where there were either #RedforEd protests or agency fee laws.

All the financial information comes from the unions’ annual disclosure reports for the Internal Revenue Service detailing their income and expenditures. These are public records, but the pandemic created a long delay before the IRS made many of them available.

Now that I'm not required to give them a cent of my money, it doesn't matter to me if they grow, shrink, or stay steady.  I just want them to leave me alone.

So Much For "The Science"

Governor Newsollini of California is going against "the science" and will make my work life a living hell when school starts again in a month:

The nation’s two biggest teachers unions have praised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new coronavirus guidance for schools, saying it offers a "roadmap" for a return to normal, even as some states go a different route... 

However, California issued immediate counter-guidance, mandating masks in the fall for teachers and students alike. 

"Masking is a simple and effective intervention that does not interfere with offering full in-person instruction," said California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Mark Ghaly. 

 "At the outset of the new year, students should be able to walk into school without worrying about whether they will feel different or singled out for being vaccinated or unvaccinated — treating all kids the same will support a calm and supportive school environment," he said.

I agree with the teachers unions.  The ground feels cold.

There was a time when I was proud to be from California.  Now it's just a sick joke.

Third Anniversary

Happy Mark Janus Day!

As Good A Reason As Any To Leave The Teachers Union

I’m no fan of the BDS movement, and even less a fan of institutional support for that movement.  But if it gets people to leave that crappy union, I guess I’ve found its silver lining:

A teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has resigned from the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union as a result of the union taking up a motion supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The motion, which was passed during UTLA’s North Area (northeast Los Angeles) and Harbor Area (which includes Carson and San Pedro) meetings on May 20, expressed “our solidarity with the Palestinian people and call for Israel to end bombardment of Gaza and stop displacement at Sheikh Jarrah” and endorsed “the international campaign for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against apartheid in Israel.” UTLA said in a statement that the motion would be taken up for a vote by the UTLA House of Representatives in September and that motions passed in Area meetings don’t reflect the opinion of UTLA leadership.

Lindsey Kohn, a sixth-grade math and science teacher at James Madison Middle School in North Hollywood, wrote in her letter of resignation that “I feel unsafe as a Jew in this UTLA” with the motion being brought to a vote. “As an educated person, I cannot understand how the union can stand by a terrorist organization and a country that bombs Israel, hurts their children and wants to kill every Jew. The Palestinians use children and civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for their death. This political battle has NOTHING to do with the education of my students.”

Additionally, Kohn chided UTLA for supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, accusing the union of putting “many lives in danger by taking away our school safety officers. This organization is racist, anti-semitic [sic] and clearly extremely ignorant.”